How Marc Andreessen is like Robert Moses: ‘It’s time to build’ AI
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This week, while driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, I mulled over the similarities between a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen’s outspoken opinions on the future of AI and famed urban planner Robert Moses’ confident views on the future of cities.
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Did you spend your weekend driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, mulling over the similarities between a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen’s outspoken opinions on the future of AI and famed urban planner Robert Moses’ confident views on the future of cities? I did.
Honestly, I can’t stop thinking about Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” from last week. I’m fully ashamed to say that on Friday night, even as I sang along with my niece during the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie, and fist-pumped to “I Knew You Were Trouble,” my mind wandered to Andreessen’s 5,000-word screed filled with sentences like “We believe that since human wants and needs are infinite, economic demand is infinite, and job growth can continue forever” and “We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives.”
In my newsletter, I wrote that Andreessen’s essay about the future of artificial intelligence was hilarious. A giggle-fest. An absolute knee-slapper. Come on — build AI so our descendants will “live in the stars?” Really?
But upon further reflection, I realize that the “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” is dead-serious.
That is, serious in the way that Robert Moses was outspoken, steadfast and uncompromising in his efforts to transform New York City and its suburbs, changing the way cities around the U.S. were designed and built. Moses believed it was “time to build” in order to eradicate“blight” — by constructing high-rise public housing projects and bulldozing neighborhoods in order to connect suburbs to the city with new highways. He razed city blocks and forever eliminated Black, Latino and Jewish neighborhoods. At least a quarter of a million New Yorkers were estimated to be displaced during his four-decade reign.
Meet LLEMMA, the math-focused open source AI that outperforms rivals
In a new paper, researchers from various universities and Eleuther AI, a company renowned for its open-source models, introduce LLEMMA, an open-source large language model (LLM) specifically designed to solve mathematical problems.
LLEMMA surpasses other leading math-focused language models—including Google’s Minerva—in performance, offering a robust platform for further research.
Although LLEMMA is not a flawless math solver, it represents a significant stride towards the development of specialized large language models and can propel AI research in new directions.
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New Nvidia AI agent, powered by GPT-4, can train robots
Nvidia Research announced today that it has developed a new AI agent, called Eureka, that is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and can autonomously teach robots complex skills.
In a blog post, the company said Eureka, which autonomously writes reward algorithms, has, for the first time, trained a robotic hand to perform rapid pen-spinning tricks as well as a human can. Eureka has also taught robots to open drawers and cabinets, toss and catch balls, and manipulate scissors, among nearly 30 tasks.
“Reinforcement learning has enabled impressive wins over the last decade, yet many challenges still exist, such as reward design, which remains a trial-and-error process,” Anima Anandkumar , senior director of AI research at NVIDIA and an author of the Eureka paper, said in the blog post. “Eureka is a first step toward developing new algorithms that integrate generative and reinforcement learning methods to solve hard tasks.”
Major music publishers sue Anthropic for copyright infringement over song lyrics
Major music publishers filed a bombshell lawsuit this week alleging AI company Anthropic has engaged in the “unlawful taking and using [of] massive amounts of copyrighted content without permission” to train its popular large language model (LLM) chatbot, Claude (superceded by Claude 2 earlier this year).
The plaintiffs—including industry heavyweights Concord, Universal, and ABKCO—claim Anthropic is “infringing Publishers’ rights and caus[ing] damage on a broad scale.”
The complaint, filed in the Middle District of Tennessee Nashville Division, accuses Anthropic of “wholesale copying” of song lyrics to fuel its AI models, which then regurgitate those lyrics when users request songs. The venue is no accident: Tennessee is known as America’s “Music City,” and has for more than a century been home to major recording studios, labels, and artists, especially in country music (it is where Taylor Swift got her start). As such, it is likely favorable ground to artists and labels leveling lawsuits.
How transparent are AI models? Stanford researchers found out.
Today Stanford University’s Center for Research on Foundation Models (CRFM) took a big swing on evaluating the transparency of a variety of AI large language models (that they call foundation models). It released a new Foundation Model Transparency Index to address the fact that while AI’s societal impact is rising, the public transparency of LLMs is falling — which is necessary for public accountability, scientific innovation and effective governance.
The Index results were sobering: No major foundation model developer was close to providing adequate transparency, according to the researchers — the highest overall score was 54% — revealing a fundamental lack of transparency in the AI industry. Open models led the way, with Meta’s Llama 2 and Hugging Face’s BloomZ getting the highest scores. But a proprietary model, OpenAI’s GPT-4, came in third — ahead of Stability’s Stable Diffusion.